Losing things (and people)

Decades before embarking on my current journaling experience with Suleika Jaouad’s book, I took another journey with Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Besides the practice of writing daily pages, I took away from that experience the importance of artist dates—moments away from routines and must-dos to think, see, experience, feel.

Last week I had two artist dates! On the way home from the second one with friend C., she told me that the soap maker from whom she’d bought gift soaps for years was going out of business. Her sorrow was greater than mine, but as I thought of the last bits of her latest gift at home, I experienced a sense of loss. And I remembered another time when soap and loss were bound together. I wrote about it in “Vestige.”

Vestige

When this soap was new

we were together

Your smile sneaked

around the corner

as I bought it

in the boardwalk shop

Now it foams in my hands

innocent conductor of memory,

a wound hollowed out

more each time

I miss your smile most

because it was rare—

you wore your

earnestness more often

Just a sliver of soap remains

I waver

Use it all up—

or tuck it away?